Complete blockage Frankfurt examples and the Principle of Alternative Possibilities

Abstract

ABSTRACT According to the ‘Principle of Alternative Possibilities’ (PAP), an agent is morally responsible for performing some action only if she could have done otherwise. Beginning with Harry Frankfurt nearly fifty years ago, a number of putative counterexamples (‘Frankfurt examples’) have been offered. In this essay, I consider a type of counterexample developed by David Hunt: so-called ‘complete blockage’ Frankfurt examples. The chief objection to these cases is that they presuppose causal determinism, thereby begging the question against incompatibilists. I argue, however, that even if we grant that complete blockage Frankfurt examples assume causal determinism, they can still be successfully deployed as counterexamples to PAP without begging the question.